Sleep Genius Aims to Awaken Small-Business Productivity

Feel like you could use a little more sleep? You’re not alone. Researchers at Harvard Medical School say that at least 30 percent of the civilian workforcein the U.S. is chronically sleep-deprived. What’s worse, all that grogginess is costing businesses more than $60 billion a year in reduced productivity.

Increasingly, U.S. businesses are awakening to the reality that exhausted workers can negatively impact a company’s bottom line. Some even encourage power naps on the clock: Google, for example, designates precious real estate at its Silicon Valley headquarters as nap zones.

Although medical experts insist that there are many complex factors contributing to what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls an epidemic of insufficient sleep, combating the serious side effects of sleeplessness may be as easy as downloading a groundbreaking new app from the Apple App Store.

“There is a direct correlation between the quality of sleep you receive and your productivity at the office,” entrepreneur Colin House tells the Intuit Small Business Blog. In fact, it was House’s awareness of America’s sleeplessness that inspired the creation of Sleep Genius, anapplication for iOS (and soon for Android) that was tediously designed by experts in neuroscience, sound, and music.

Mobile App Supports Powers Naps

With scientific research lending validity to the claim that even short naps can improve one’s alertness, Sleep Genius may soon become a staple around the office. Why? It delivers a scientifically created feature that could make power naps even more powerful.

“Sleep Genius is not just another gimmicky white noise app,” House insists. “It truly helps you attain the most deep and efficient sleep possible and is backed by unprecedented research and neuroscience.”

A 2008 University of Dusseldorf study published in theJournal of Sleep Research reveals that memory recall is significantly boosted from power naps. Less than 30 minutes of shut-eye can improve alertness by as much as 54 percent.

So, can modern technologies like Sleep Genius really boost worker restfulness and productivity?

According to neuroscientist and NASA-funded sleep researcher Seth Horowitz, they can. “Sleep is not simple unconsciousness,” he notes. “It is an extraordinarily complex and critical brain-controlled behavior that is harnessed by Sleep Genius.”